SUPERSYMMETRY BREAKING IN THE EARLY UNIVERSE

Supersymmetry breaking in the early Universe induces scalar soft potentials with curvature of the order of the Hubble constant. This has a dramatic effect on the coherent production of scalar fields along flat directions. For moduli fields, this breaking generically gives a concrete realization of the moduli problem by determining the field value at early times. However, it suggests a solution if the minimum of the induced potential coincides with the true minimum. For the Affleck-Dine mechanism, large squark and slepton expectation values generally do not result if the induced soft mass squared is positive, but they do occur if it is negative. An acceptable baryon asymmetry can be obtained without subsequent entropy releases and is related to the mass of the lightest neutrino.